My love for astronomy began over two cold nights in early November, 1968. It was a hunting weekend and I was at the cottage with my dad. With interest growing at the time about the lunar surface (the first manned lunar landing was to be in July, 1969), I went up on a nearby mountain with my 6x30 binoculars, lay down on the cold ground and gazed at the moon. It was full, but I was intrigued by what I saw. I went up again the next night, and made some notes about the craters, ray structures, and dark areas that I saw.
The next Monday morning I went to my high school library. It had one astronomy book, and I checked it out for a week. "Field Book of the Skies," by William T. Olcott, had maps of the moon at different phases, as well as maps of constellations and what could be seen in them. It was also a complete prep course on astronomy. I read it cover to cover about seven times, checking it out week after week. Over the long, cold Sudbury, Ontario winter I developed a strong thirst to see for myself what the skies had to offer.
When March finally arrived, my favorite uncle provided me with my first telescope. He had received it as a gift when he was a child. It was a 3" reflector, a plastic model of the Hale 100" Telescope. The mirror was crap, the eyepiece was plastic, and it was colored a garish red and blue. But to a 15 year old kid, that first view of the lunar surface at 30x sent me into ecstasy! I saw mountains, craters, mare, and other things I could not describe. I saw Jupiter and 4 moons. I was suddenly in with the in crowd! I was an astronomy geek!
My first telescope, a small 3" reflector modeled on the 100"
Hale Telescope.
The toy scope was once featured in a Gumby cartoon!
It did not take long to figure out that I needed to upgrade if I wanted to do some serious observing. I soon had a Tasco 4.5" reflector on back order. It would take an agonizing month to get to me, so I went to K-Mart and bought a 40mm refractor for the interim. It was quite serviceable with its table-top tripod, especially at 15x. I had my first clear view of the Orion Nebula, and even M 41, the amazing open cluster in Canis Major.
When the Tasco reflector arrived, I felt like I had my own private observatory for the first time. Despite crappy eyepieces, that telescope showed me (for years!) the possibilities. Summers at the cottage, under the darkest northern Ontario skies one could imagine, brought me unforgettable visual image after image. To this day the best view I've had of M 101 was with that telescope, spiral arms and all, in a sky so dark that binoculars would have likely shown the galaxy. The Mars opposition of 1971 was also very memorable, at least until the planet-wide dust storm obliterated all detail!
Throughout all this I was struggling with the little constellation diagrams in Olcott, somehow managing to use them to learn to see and to love the night sky. What an improvement to my observing life when the same uncle (Jimmy Whitehead) that gave me his toy telescope also bought me Norton's Star Altas and the Menzel book "Stars and Planets."
But it was Olcott's book that really captured my imagination and got my interest in observing to a fever pitch. As we packed up our gear last night after an incredible and highly successful session, we saw Antares rising in the southeast, heralding the arrival of summer. I will now conclude this entry with a wonderful quote from his book:
"Recreation, in the widest sense of the word, includes intellectual pleasure, enjoyment of sheer beauty, mental relaxation, and the fun of sight-seeing. If the sight of the first robin or the first crocus in spring brings you delight, you can experience the same exultation by being able to recognize the seasonal return of various celestial objects of beauty, such as Spica, as they return to our night skies."
William T. Olcott (1873-1936)
May your skies be dark and clear until next time.
Mapman Mike
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